ndepal

this is a good place to post your settings and how you got everything to work. im sure many people beside myself would really appreciate it

an official request would surely have more of an impact than this thread. why dont you get on that and post a draft here... :p:D

well there is one means, PPJoy. since that program istn very new and not compatible with 64bit systems, it would be great to have something like a newer version of PPJoy. i posetd a while ago that arma2 keeps reseting my PPJoy joystick to the fefault mapping, does anybody else have that issue or a way to stop that from happening? thanks

since were not even supposed to be discussing this here, ill try to keep it short. ok now your just being finicky. when i compare sizes of compaines i of course mean the size in the whole market, i.e. the market share. admittedly i didnt use the perfect word but if you had used a little common sense you would have realized that thats what i meant... in the intrest of a short post im not going to comment quote by quote, but it boils down to this: i dont think that by monopolizing BS and Arma1 (actually only Arma2, really, since BS has some FT-support now) NP is monopolizing a big enough share of the Freelook-games-market. there are qite some games who have TIR-independent FT support (FlightSim, a rather important title in the (flight)sim community, comes to mind) thats why i believe that what NP is doing isnt "bad eough" to be illegal. but if you believe otherwise then why dont you report NP to that comission you quote? they should be interested in this then... i would once more like to clarify the following: i am no NP-Fanboy i have an FT-setup that i would like to see supported in Arma2 i dont want the situation to be the way i describe, i just believe that it is i would really like to see some legal actions confirming your opinion @ Planck: for one thing i agree with Jorge.PT, its kind of hard not to talk about NP when discussing this topic. also i dont see much else to talk about, we dont really need another bunch of people writing whats been written so many times before, saying that they want FT in arma. we know, and if BI were interested in our concerns they could have commented on this already. in oder to find out how many people of this forum would actually use FT in arma2, a poll would be much more effective than another hundred "i want FT in arma2 and NP is mean" posts... so i guess what this means is that if what were discussing is the only thing to discuss and isnt wecome here they might as well close the thread... have a god day everybody

ok, apparently you didnt hear a word i said. I AGREE with you when you say that NP is blocking other headtracking devices from being used in Arma. I AGREE with you when you say that that means that tir is the only solution supported by arma... BUT: you have to be careful about what you say. THEY ARE trying to keep compeditors out of that patricular game, yes. BUT ARMA ISNT THE WHOLE MARKET. THATS THE BIG DIFFERENCE YOU FAIL TO SEE! thats why your comparisons to MS and intel arent good. its the sheer scope of the companies. when a company the size of MS/intel does things that they did, they are effectively preventing competitors from existing IN THE WHOLE MARKET. NP is preventing FT from being in arma, which is ONE GAME and you have lots and lots of other options The old "if you don't like it, you can leave" argument? im kinda too lazy to reply to the rest of your post too carefully because im affraid you wont get what im saying anyways. i would just like to clarify: I DONT LIKE THAT NP IS BLOCKING OUT FT I WOULD LIKE TO USE FT IN ARMA WITH THEIR AGREEMENT NP IS CREATING SOMETHING YOU COULD CALL A (SMALL) MONOPOLY but SINCE "NP'S MONOPOLISTIC BEHAVIOUR" IS ON SUCH A SMALL SCALE IT DOES NOT RATE AS ILLEGAL THE COMPARISONS YOU MADE WERE BOTH NOT SUITABLE BECAUSE THE COMPANIES ARE SO LARGE AND THEIR ACTIONS HAD A SEVERE EFFECT ON THE WHOLE MARKET. THATS THE KEY DIFFERENCE! (while this issue only affects arma, which makes up for a relatively small percentage of the videogame market) i cant make it any more clear than this. if you still dont understand there is nothin i can do. you may reply to this post telling re-telling me your opinion if you like, i wont care too much since i believe the rest of the readers will understand the problem at hand as well as what im trying to communicate.

im sorry but your not seeing some very important differences here. the first one being that in the example of intel: NP isnt doing anything comparable, as they dont sell anything to BI the second one is the scope of the "monopolistic behaviour" if you will. while intel and MS tried to exclude compeditors from the whole market this is not what NP is doing with these contracts. as i stated in my previous post, nobody forces you to play ArmA2, there are many other games you can play. also you dont really need to play any games, its completely voluntary. in comparison: MS provided only one browser in their very popular OS. so many many people were forced to use IE with windows (the key differences being that windows was very widely spread (over 50% - not the case with Arma2) and that people had to use the internet via windows (you dont have to use tir with arma2) another important point is that you can fully play arma2 (with freelook) without needing a track ir (not the case in either of your examples: if you want to use a computer you need a cpu, you were pretty much forced to use an intel model. if you want to use the internet you were pretty much forced to use IE) so all of this summed up means that NP isnt doing anything illegal. ist just a contract they made that NP is the exclusive headtracking supporter for arma2. this is comparable to a game developer (i.e. BI) exclusively distributing their product (arma2) via one publisher (505 games or sth, in england right?). nobody is complaining about that, but its also a contract of exclusivity. i hope i was able to write down all of my thoughts understandably... take care

im affraid this wont rate as illegal monopolistic behaviour. a monopolistic situation would be if you were forced to use the product of one company and there would be no other options. but THATS NOT THE CASE HERE! because while TrackIR is the only system supported by ArmA2, you dont have to use headtracking to play the game and more importantly you dont have to play that game! an example of a company that has gotten close to being in trouble for this is microsoft. since theyre so big apple was losing to much market share and MS got legally too big. in order to prevent that they actually had to "donate" a rather large sum of money to apple, so that they could regain a little more of the market, in order to be allowed to stay in business. it sounds kinda weird but they had to do that because of these laws. and in the long run they end up with more money because they can keep making their products and making money. with NP we dont have this kind of situation because there are other solutions that NP istn generally preventing from existing (in the overall market) but they made a contract which states (or so we believe) that NP is to be the exclusive partner for BIs ArmA2, which is nowhere illegal, albeit not that great for the FT community. but honestly, as a businessman, woundnt you do the same to ensure the most profit with your product?

well im not sure that they do. and even if they actually do, it doesnt seem to make all that great of an impact on them, considering they havent felt the need to reply to us in spite of several requests. by knocking on doors i mean more active "knocking" such as emailling/calling or writing a real and official letter from FT to BI, that would affect more in my eyes because its a formal request. they cant do everything anybody posts in a forum, but they can talk to people who contact them in an official manner...

ok sorry but im sure you dont even believe that thats actually a considerable choice. i mean just because most FT-setups are DIY doesnt mean that if the FT team wants to present it they cant present a kit already put together. obviously if you went and said hey try our software but before please spend a bunch of time glueing stuff together, they would laugh at you. but you could just as well say please try our software with the hardware kit provided (precisely what NP or any other comercial company does). wether that kit be one "homebrewed" by FT or one out of the box (or boxes...) like Bushlurker described doesnt really matter. so as far as that goes FT doesnt have less of a chance of being considered. although, i agree, it needs a lot of time and effort to get your software to be considered, sth a company like NP can afford, FT probably cant. so thats really (one of) the reasons we dont have FT-support in our games. so if you really want that i suggest you make your request be heard by FT and donate a bunch of money so they can afford to take time off of their jobs and do some "knocking on BI's doors" :)

first of all thank you for this great long TrackIR-fanboy (i assume) post, we really needed one of those. no but serisously: i dont think you understood what i meant to say. i was simply trying to point out that FT actually does have their own SDK that could be used to make FT compatible with ArmA2, for example. i just wanted to clarify this because people kept saying stuff like "well FT is just stupid if they had their own SDK then all their compatibility issues would be gone" or things to that effect. just so you dont feel like you have to post this big reply where you try to make me look like a fool: i dont unconditionally support the FT side of this. if NP wants to protext their own software then by all means i think they should, its what i would do. but i would still like to see FT implementation in games such as ArmA2. my guess is that the future holds head tracking support like we have joysticksupport now. *keeping fingers crossed* regarding the lag comment of yours: FT setups arent necessarily laggy at all, actually. if you just use the cheapest webcam there is, then maybe. but there are several options (WiiMote, PS3Eye) that give you great framerates and ping. so dont just bash the FreeTrack idea if you havent tried it to its full extent...

can i just ask one question: what EXACTLY is NP doing (in the black shark example)? i know they tried to shut out freetrack users but what exactly did they prohibit? did they prohibit the use of the trackIR interface by freetrack or did they prohibit any other interface to be implemented in the game? and when they finally agreed to allow 3DOF was that via a seperate API or NP's trackIR? if they allowed their software to be used for that then they actually have to be considered generous. its quite an important difference because they have every right to protect their own software. if they prohibited any other interface to be implemtented then that is to be considered monopolistic behaviour and would be illegal (in europe at least) please reply with valid sources! thank you

they dont rely on NPs software. freetrack has many output options. one of them is the (old non-encrypted) trackIR interface, one of them is the FlightSim-api and one of them is their own freetrack interface. please nobody write a post saying its freetracks fault cuz they dont have their own SDK, THEY DO HAVE ONE!

ive been playing around with it for a bit now and there were moments where i got it to work with freetrack (barely) i used PPJoy to simulate a joystick and assigned the axes to the corresponding analog-look-command. (after deleting the mappings to all the other interfering stuff, they map PPJoy to a lot of things, some of which are rather questionable...) i never got smooth head motion and for the most part it was unusable. i tried to fiddle around with the joystick calibration in ArmA2 but got tired of it. the big problem is that whenever i reopen the controls menu ArmA is kind enough to remap PPjoy to all its default actions and since those are a lot to be deleted and you have to reassign the whole damn thing again its not very attractive... if anyone else had more luck im sure many would welcome if you shared, myself included. btw i use Vista home premium 32bit, Freetrack 2.2 with a reflective headset clip cyall

oh yeah thats true i didnt think about that... well thats too bad really. i guess the only way to have Freetrack support is to have a general interface where all trackingsystems can conect to, like the way it works with mice etc. so i guess this whole thing ist just kind of ahead of its time. maybe in a few years well see that kind of support... EDIT: I just read up on ppjoy and well... i once again think the problem is solvable... :P well actually if i got the idea of ppjoy then i dont really see a problem. if you can emulate a joystick with your freetrack system then you could just assign that 'joystick' to your head movement in ama2... so if some one could be kind enough to tell me why everybody isnt doing that, that'd be great. also the direct input thing sounds like an option. why arent people using that?

i dont believe you quite understood what i meant. the idea is to make a program that takes the camera feed and converts it to the data the TrackIR software can use. so the program makes the TrackIR software think that you have the TrackIR device, feeding it with the data, while you actually just have your wegcam. i know that its kind of complicated but if it worked i think it would be a rather elegant solution to the problem... EDIT: i think i just got what you meant. if you mean that the person writing that program then yes, that person does need the device. but once somebody has programed it, he could distribute the program and no one else would have to buy the TrackIR